Penn State's disgrace

Copyright 2012: Houston Chronicle

Updated 9:02 am, Thursday, July 26, 2012

Texas is a football hotbed. We are the land of "Friday Night Lights." Legendary high school and major college programs thrive here. And we start 'em young. The fundamentals of the sport are taught to young boys (and sometimes girls) from the day they are old enough to square their shoulders and assume a three-point stance.

Which is all by way of saying that the disgrace that has rightly smeared the Penn State football program hits close to home.

Could such a thing happen in Texas? Sure. There could be a Jerry Sandusky lurking in a locker room seeking young victims in Texas or any other place where football is played. Or baseball or soccer, for that matter. We're talking about sexual abuse of children here.

Penn State has paid a heavy price for the sins of Sandusky, a longtime assistant coach under the legendary Joe Paterno. Sandusky's conviction on 45 counts of sex crimes against a child, and Penn State's unwillingness to do something to stop these crimes, has landed the Nittany Lions' program in disgrace.

The incidents, which took place over many years and were ignored for nearly as long, will cost the school $60 million in fines. That money will go toward funding programs designed to ensure that crimes such as those perpetrated by Sandusky against boys and young men will be stopped elsewhere.

The late Paterno, once the model of the upstanding college football leader, has been thoroughly disgraced. A statue has been removed from outside the Penn State football stadium, and his name has been stripped from facilities honoring him elsewhere. Lastly, more than 100 wins have been erased from his record, removing him from the position of all-time winning college football coach.

Two of those forfeited victories, in bowl games, will be added to the win column for Texas A&M. We're sure this isn't the way the Aggies, or any other of Penn State's foes, would like to build their own winning records.

Football rightly has a place deep in the hearts of Texans. It teaches teamwork, self-reliance, mental and physical toughness, discipline, courage under pressure and helps create lifelong friendships. Texas just wouldn't be Texas without football.

But as we ponder the Penn State tragedy - and tragedy's the right word - we wonder about a system that looks the other way while crimes against innocent young people are perpetrated in plain view. In a locker room shower, for heaven's sake.

It leads us to a question about the football culture that places coaches in positions of unquestioned authority. Is that really healthy, or even necessary?

We ask because it seems clear that a code of silence prevented Sandusky's behavior from being called out and prosecuted for nearly two decades. Even Joe Paterno, the most powerful man on the Penn State campus for all of that time, was reluctant to take action. Penn State administrators are facing criminal charges for failing to respond. Was it because they did not want to get crosswise with a coaching legend? It appears so.

How many other college football coaches wield that same clout on other football-frenzied campuses? What about high school coaches with major programs? Doesn't the deference also extend to them? We think it does, in many instances.

Such a system leaves victims of behavior such as Jerry Sandusky's without a voice and condemns them to futures that are living nightmares. That culture of unquestioning authority is one of the first things that should be addressed by football programs across the nation, along with the code of silence it fosters.

In the Sandusky case, there were numerous red flags that were ignored by those in the Penn State leadership.

Red flags ought never be ignored - wherever they are found and whatever the consequences are. Ignoring them only makes matters worse.

The code of silence that shielded Jerry Sandusky at Penn State also must be broken wherever it is found in athletic programs. That is the least that can be done in the name of Sandusky's victims.